• U.S. officials warn of Al-Qaeda's nuclear ambitions

    DHS, DOE, and intelligence officials tell Congress al-Qaeda is continuing its pursuit of a nuclear weapon; monitoring the progress of the organization in reaching this goal is difficult: “We must find something that is tactical in size but strategic in impact,” says one official

  • Foreign investors vie for Chicago's Midway airport

    The administration has given Chicago the green light to sell Midway airport; six consortiums — five of them involving non-U.S. companies — said they would put in their bids; post-DPW rumblings about non-U.S. ownership of U.S. critical infrastructure are already being heard

  • The U.S. on course to deactivating all its chemical weapons

    On 25 November 1969 President Richard Nixon unilaterally renounced the first use of chemical weapons and renounced all methods of biological warfare; the United States has been deactivating chemical weapons ever since, and to date has destroyed about 45 percent of the chemical weapons it had produced; it is not likely, though, that the United States would achieve the complete destruction of its chemical weapons stockpile by 2012, as mandated by the Chemical Weapons Treaty

  • CoreStreet's new access control technology making news

    CoreStreet’s Card-Connected technology creates a system of stand-alone electronic locks and physical access control systems which communicate by reading and writing digitally signed data (privileges and logs) to and from smart cards; card holders thus become an extension of the physical access network in which cards, rather than of wires, carry information to and from the standalone locks

  • NRG, Toshiba to promote ABWRs

    There are serious questions about the security of Boiling-Water Reactor (BWR) design and construction, questions which Advanced Boiling-Water Reactor (ABWR) design was supposed to answer; not everyone is convinced; NRG Energy, Toshiba to promote and build ABWRs in the United States

  • Small businesses offer real-world environmental technologies

    EPA is one of eleven federal agencies which participate in the SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) program; a surprising number of small companies offer innovative and effective technologies to deal with environmental problems

  • Orsus Situator to be deployed at water supplier facilities

    The new approach to critical infrastructure security is “holistic”: Planning, training, positioning information gathering equipment, imposing intelligence on video streams and other information coming in, presenting all information in accessible fashion, offering a menu of responses when an incident occurs; Orsus offers a situation management solution to critical infrastructure operators

  • New nerve gas deactivation method offered

    What to do with thousands of tons of chemical weapon stored in rusting drums on military bases in the United States? Bleach reacts indiscriminately — even explosively — with many chemicals such as propellants, and using alkaline hydrolysis has its own drawbacks; researchers develop a deactivation method based on dealkylating agents

  • Preparing for the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) threat

    One unexpected lesson of the many nuclear tests conducted by the superpowers in the late 1950s and early 1960s was that high-altitude nuclear blasts create far-reaching atmospheric effects that could instantly shut down power grids; as modern life becomes ever-more dependent on electronic gadgets, and as the proliferation of nuclear weapons and missiles continue, fear grows that an adversary will seek to cripple the United States by creating an atmospheric EMP effect

  • Saudis set up special force to protect critical insrastructure

    In February 2006 al Qaeda terrorists tried to blow up the world’s largest oil processing plant at Abqaiq; the Saudi government responded by setting up a 15,000-strong special force to protect oil, gas, and water desalination infrastructure

  • New, more demanding rules for hazmat rail tanker construction

    New safety standard will increase by 500 percent on average the amount of energy the tank car must absorb during a train accident before a catastrophic failure may occur

  • Florida port deploys Coda Octopus's Underwater Inspection System

    Coda Octopus UIS uses Coda Echoscope, a real time 3D sonar technology; port’s public safety and bomb squad divers will be using the system on their small patrol vessels

  • Intelligent wireless networks promoted by European consortium

    The proliferation of wireless communication-enabled embedded systems will have significant effects in areas from emergency management to critical infrastructure protection to healthcare and traffic control; European consortium to promote idea

  • ICx in contract for specialty radar system for robots

    General Dynamics gives ICx Technologies a follow-on contract for the Mobile Detection Assessment and Response System (MDARS) Intruder Detection Radar Sensor

  • Climate change to affect U.S. transportation system

    Flooding of roads, railways, transit systems, and airport runways in coastal areas because of rising sea levels and surges will require significant changes in the planning, design, construction, operation, and maintenance of transportation systems